Barberries are also called Oregon grape, mahonia, tall Oregon grape, tall mahonia, dull Oregon grape, poor man's red currant, Invista.com informs us. The plants are the fruits of a shrub of which many species grow wild throughout the temperate regions of Europe, Asia, and America. A closely related genus, Mahonia, is a familiar ornamental shrub in western countries.

All the species bear fruits that are edible  but very sour. The Berberis berries are generally red, but vary from coral to deep crimson, and almost black.

Canadian Gardening writes thatafter more than 35 years in exile, barberries have made a glorious return. They were banished in 1966 when some types were found to be hosts to Puccinia graminis, a fungus that infects cereal crops, such as wheat, barley and rye, with a devastating disease called black stem rust. Though some horticulturists believed that the Japanese barberry, Berberis thunbergii, was undeservedly targeted along with its more common and highly invasive European cousin, B. vulgaris, many barberries on public property were uprooted and carted away. On private property, however, mature specimens remained, taunting us with their beauty.

American growers (the ban was not all-encompassing in the U.S.) have developed a number of rust-resistant cultivars of B. thunbergii. Last spring, after years of discussions between the Canadian Nursery Landscape Assn. and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), as well as Canadian cereal crop growers, 11 varieties became available in Canadian nurseries and garden centers, and more are expected to follow.

The plants are eligible for import, propagation and distribution in Canada, but they can only be propagated asexually from cuttings rather than from seed because seed-grown plants run the risk of reverting to an original form that could contain problems, according to the magazine.

By the way, the name berberis comes from the Arabic name for the barberry fruit. The cultivar B. thunbergii, native to Japan, is named for Carl Peter Thunberg, a Swedish botanist, zoologist and medical doctor (1743-1828) who had to masquerade as a Dutch doctor to be allowed into Japan to hunt plants.

Rugosa roses are native to far north Pacific Rim regions such as the Kamchatka peninsula and Alaska. It is one of the toughest, hardiest roses. They tend to inherit a dense, shrubby form lush with foliage, and produce good fragrances.

Being so densely provided with leaves, they languish in the heat of the desert and the deep south; give them a few hours of shade between 3 and 6 pm. Finally, they do not produce huge flowers - though some are as much as 3 inches across.

Ultimately, officials chose barberries and the white, pink and purple flowering rugosa rose bushes for their hardiness, height and most importantly, dense thorny branches that should be a menace to trespassers.

You can feel it even through the pants, said Chip Pew, rail safety specialist for the FRA, who experienced the shrubs prickly wrath while counting them. Not only do they scratch you, but some of the needles come off and get in your clothes.

These things almost look like a hairy branch, there are so many little spines, he said.

The plantings will cap a year of several high-profile incidents of trains striking and killing pedestrians, including several children. While one of those incidents was a suicide and another happened at a train station, they were enough to prompt Metra to launch an educational campaign last spring and spend tens of thousands more this fall to try to keep children from crossing tracks in illegal places.

They also sparked discussions between the FRA, Metra, UP and Burlington Northern and Santa Fe to determine what else could be done about trespassing, a common occurrence when people try to save time.

In the past, agencies have tried to deter behavior by working with law enforcement to ticket trespassers. In some cases, Metra has erected fences.

Installing metal fencing along 11,000 miles of track in Illinois is not only cost prohibitive, its not effective because people will quickly cut holes through it, said Pew, who also is state coordinator for Illinois Operation Lifesaver, a rail safety program.

So officials came up with another idea: thorny bushes.

Its not the first time shrubs have been planted along tracks to stop crossings. UP did a similar program in the Milwaukee area in the late 1970s, according to railroad spokesman Gene Hinkle, but it appears to be a first in the Chicago region, which has a high concentration of grade crossings.

Pew consulted with plant experts at the Chicago Botanic Garden to choose the right shrubs, which needed to grow in wind-blown, dirt-poor, rocky areas around tracks that receive only natural water.

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